


i saw the sky (coming down to meet you)

by patrokla



Category: Preacher (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Episode: s03e03 Gonna Hurt, Established Relationship, M/M, Multi, Polyamory, Tenderness, jesse custer: making time to be tender in the midst of bloody torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-07
Updated: 2019-08-07
Packaged: 2020-08-11 04:04:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,205
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20147338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/patrokla/pseuds/patrokla
Summary: “I love you,” Jesse had told him only hours earlier, while Cassidy lay on the bed, pretending to be engrossed in some ancient comic.“Oh, that’s nice,” Cassidy had said. “It’s just, the phrase loses a bit of its shine when it comes hot on the heels of you admitting you think I’m a disgusting monster."





	i saw the sky (coming down to meet you)

**Author's Note:**

> This is just a few moments from 3x03 in a world where Jesse, Tulip, and Cassidy are together.
> 
> Title from the Mountain Goats' 'Tahitian Ambrosia Maker.'
> 
> Warnings for: canon-typical violence, implied internalized bi/homophobia, (canonical) hatred of supernatural beings as a metaphor (if that) for racism, and the most minimal of editing.
> 
> eta 8/10: did some editing!

Jesse hears T.C. outside hollering for him and knows, with a sick sense of resignation, exactly why. He knows in the same way that he’d known, driving away from Angelville, that he was always going to end up back there. The same way he'd known that Cassidy, having come with him, was always going to end up swinging from the branches of an oak tree.

-  
  
“Did you know?” Jody asks, and Jesse hears the accusation in the question that renders it rhetorical. A mere matter of politeness: you knew. You didn’t tell us, your family, and you _knew_.  
  
“Did I know what?” he says, keeping up the fiction, and forcing his eyes not to look down at the panting, swearing shape thrashing in the dirt.  
  
“That y’r friend’s a vampire,” Jody says, looking at him with a cold smile, barely visible in the dark.  
  
T.C. thrusts the limp carcass of a chicken, his chicken, towards Jesse as proof.  
  
“Course not,” Jesse mutters, looking away.  
  
He’s been thinking about the next move in this game for the last day, ever since he had failed to convince Cassidy to get the hell out while he still had a chance. He hadn’t expected to succeed; Tulip’s temporary death and Jesse’s refusal to let Cass turn her had shattered the trust between them, if not the love. Of course it had. Cassidy had taken it all in the worst way.  
  
-  
  
“I love you,” Jesse had told him only hours earlier, while Cassidy lay on the bed, pretending to be engrossed in some ancient comic.  
  
“Oh, that’s nice,” Cassidy had said.  
  
“I know I don’t say it enough,” Jesse admitted, and he let out a quiet snort.  
  
“Say it as many times as y’like, love, but it’s not exactly believable now, is it,” he muttered into the pages.  
  
“I mean it,” Jesse told him, and he did, he really did, and Cassidy of all people should know how hard this was for him. How hard he was trying.  
  
“It’s just, the phrase loses a bit of its shine when it comes hot on the heels of you admitting you think I’m a disgusting monster,” Cassidy said, and he finally discarded the comic in favor of pulling himself up against the headboard and glaring at Jesse.  
  
“I never said that,” Jesse said, “And I don’t think that, either.”  
  
“Jesse, church!” Jody shouted from downstairs, and Jesse dug his fingers into his palms and wished, not for the first time, that he had Genesis again just so he could make people shut the hell up.  
  
“Sure y’don’t,” Cassidy said, rolling his eyes, “You were just more willing to let Tulip die than to have her be like me. Message received, fuck off and leave me to my blood and Archie comics, please.”  
  
“That wasn’t Archie,” Jesse said, because it clearly wasn’t, it was Batman, he _remembered_ it and then, “Cass, it’s not like that. I told you-“  
  
“That it’s complicated, you love me, I need to leave for my own safety, et cetera. Yes, heard it. Don’t believe a word of it,” Cassidy told him, the tight set of his shoulders at odds with his casual irritation.  
  
“Jesse!” Jody shouted again, this time from the stairs, and Jesse swore.  
  
“Fine, don’t believe me,” he snapped. “Nobody seems to.”  
  
He looked around for T.C.’s bloody tray of instruments and grabbed a pair of needle-nose pliers.  
  
“You’re not gonna leave, huh?” he asked, and Cassidy just shook his head.  
  
“'M not leaving Tulip,” he insisted, and then, after a pause, added, “Or you.”  
  
“Fine,” Jesse said, and then he leaned down, pressed a quick kiss to Cassidy’s sweaty forehead, and jammed the pliers into his shoulder.  
  
-  
  
That had bought them about as much time as he could’ve hoped for, which is to say, not much. But he’d had hours to think, stuck in the truck with Jody, and so now that the time has come, he has some semblance of a plan to carry out. He doesn’t think Cassidy will think much of it, but then, Cassidy had lost the right to give input on the plan when he’d refused to have an actual conversation with him.  
  
“Woulda strung him up myself if I knew,” Jesse says, aiming a kick at Cassidy and thinking _you stupid, stupid, stubborn son of a bitch_.  
  
“Sure,” Jody drawls, clearly unconvinced. He starts pulling on his end of the rope, bringing Cassidy up.  
  
Jesse doesn’t stop him, or T.C. either, just lets them hoist Cassidy aloft until his face is level with Jesse’s.  
  
“Got a couple hours before the sun starts to rise,” T.C. tells Cassidy, “Then you’re gonna start fryin'.”  
  
“Frying, that's the technical term, is it?” Cassidy asks, and Jesse bites back a smile.  
  
“C’mon, let’s go have a drink while we wait,” he suggests, and he can see Jody scrutinizing him in the darkness.  
  
“Alright,” Jody says, clearly suspicious.  
  
“Just give me a minute here before we go in,” Jesse says, and Jody shakes his head, but pushes T.C. in the direction of the house. Jesse waits until he hears Jody’s heavy footsteps stop, far enough away that he won’t be able to hear what Jesse says next, but close enough that Jesse won’t be able to free Cassidy without being seen.  
  
“Just wanted one last opportunity to tell me what a piece of shit I am, eh, padre?” Cassidy says, all bravado, and there's something in his voice that makes Jesse want to shout. The idea that some part of Cass thinks this might be it - that Jesse would really leave him here - it sends a sudden wave of nausea through him.  
  
But he doesn't shout, or fall to his knees, or cut Cassidy loose and damn the consequences. Instead, he brings a hand up and grips the back of Cassidy’s head, which is uncomfortably slick with blood where T.C. had clocked him, and leans in real close.  
  
“I love you,” he tells Cassidy, firmly, “I’m gonna get you out of here. But it’s really gonna hurt.”  
  
“Right, because the rest of this has been so bloody painless -“ Cassidy starts, and Jesse tugs at his hair until he shuts up.  
  
“I love you,” he says again. It’s dark, but not so dark that he can risk kissing Cassidy, and it probably wouldn’t do much good, besides, so he settles for holding Cassidy still for a moment, face pressed into his neck, fingers buried in his hair, breathing in the smell of blood and dirt and Tulip’s shampoo, which Cassidy always steals.  
  
Then he lets go, turns around, and walks back to the house.  
  
“What’d you say to him?” T.C. asks, and Jesse shakes his head and plasters on a bitter smile.  
  
“Told him he was a backstabbing piece of shit, and I was looking forward to seeing him burn,” he says.  
  
Jody snorts, clearly still not buying it, but he doesn’t say anything.  
  
They go inside in silence, Jesse already counting down the minutes until he can suggest, as though it has only just occurred to him, that maybe they should use Cassidy for the Tombs instead. His right hand is sticky with Cassidy’s blood. 


End file.
